Cyberbullying: new phenomenon or the playground gone online?

A study of Internet using teens reveals that much of the cyberbullying they …

As kids have started pursuing more of their social lives online, their parents have become increasingly concerned that they are taking their bad habits with them. But the anonymity and lack of direct consequences facilitated by the online world has raised concerns that cyberbullying may be a completely distinct phenomenon from its real-world counterpart. A study that was published in the September edition of the Journal of School Health, however, suggests these fears may be misplaced.

The study was based on a survey of teens, recruited through the social site bolt.com. The authors recognize that this probably biased their study population towards heavy Internet users, and restricted them to using self-reported data. However, they feel that their data complemented earlier studies, which required parental permission for the participation of children. The parental involvement, the authors contend, could have inhibited the children; indeed, roughly a third of their participants voiced concerns about discussing Internet use with their parents, lest they find their online time curtailed.

The recruitment produced a population of 1,454 teenagers, with an average age of 15-1/2 years old. Nearly 75 percent of them were female, which the authors performed statistical corrections for. Data was collected on length and frequency of Internet use, and the typical activities, such as Internet messaging and blogging, were tracked. Roughly half of the group used IM or e-mail daily, with IM being slightly more popular.

Although the term "bullying" wasn't used, the students were asked to consider "anything that someone does that upsets or offends someone else." Frequency of these incidents was rated on a five-point scale from never to greater than a dozen times a year.

Over two-thirds of the group reported an incident that could be described as cyberbullying, and nearly 20 percent of them reported seven or more such incidents. The most frequent means of verbal assault came on message boards and via IM. Like the playground, the most frequent form of unpleasantry was simple name calling; in a distinct online twist, however, password theft came in second. One other factor that was unique to online behavior was the use of webcams, which correlated with an increased probability of being targeted for bullying.

But the online nature of bullying didn't appear to play a major role in its incidence. Two of the strongest predictors of whether a teen would experience cyberbullying were the amount of time spent online and whether they were the target of bullying offline. Anonymity didn't seem to play as much of a role as some have feared, as nearly three-quarters of the victims were confident that they knew who had harassed them.

Oddly, although IM was the most frequent vector for bullying, a quarter of the targets didn't bother to use the blocking capabilities built in to most IM clients. Even fewer (only 10 percent) notified anyone of the bullying. Again, the authors suggest that fear of having Internet access curtailed could be a major factor in this, as a third of the victims specifically mentioned this. But half also said that they felt they need to learn to handle it on their own.

The authors feel strongly that the fact that real-world bullying strongly predicts cyberbullying and the parallels in behavior both suggest that cyberbullying may not actually be a distinct phenomenon. "These findings further underscore the continuity between adolescents' social worlds in school and online," they conclude.